


Nightswimming

by writingonpostcards



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Claudia Stilinski's Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 07:53:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4296714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingonpostcards/pseuds/writingonpostcards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He forcefully pressed his hands into the lake water in front of him, pressed them as far into the seabed as his quivering arms allowed.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightswimming

**Author's Note:**

> inspired, of course, by the wonderful REM song

_nightswimming deserves a quiet night_

_I'm not sure all these people understand_

It’s night time on the anniversary of Claudia Stilinski’s death and Stiles, like he does every year, is walking down to the lake on the edge of the Beacon Hills Preserve. When he was younger, he and his mother would often come to the lake during the summer. Stiles learnt to swim here, his mother holding him up while he practised paddling and blowing bubbles underwater. She would rest a soft hand on his back while he learned to float, Stiles staring up at the clouds and pointing out the shapes he saw in them.

Tonight the lake is still. Inky shadows stretch out across its surface with only the moon’s reflection to reveal its size.

Stiles walks to the end of the dock and stares out at its expanse. He breathes in deeply and closes his eyes, lets himself listen. He hears the crunch of leaves crushed underfoot by small animals darting through the forest. He hears the hoots and coos of the nocturnal birds and twists his head tracking the path of one as it flies across the lake. He hears the gentle breeze as it licks over leaves and his own skin.

He smiles softly. _Hi mum,_ he thinks to the night.

Stiles strips slowly, layers peeled off one by one and folded into a pile at the end of the dock with more care than they receive any other time of the year. He eases himself off the pier and into the freezing water, holding in a breath by necessity as his body shudders through the feeling of being surrounded by cold water.

He paddles until he’s in the centre of the lake, then leans back gently until he’s floating, arms and legs spread like a star fish. There are no clouds in the sky tonight, but he imagines them there anyway. He remembers with particular clarity a cloud shaped like a dragon which his 6 year old self had pointed out to his mother with such gleeful ferocity of movement that even her protective hands couldn’t stop him from plummeting under the surface.

The lake had looked still from the shore, but here suspended at the very core of it, Stiles feels it bobbing him gently, like a mother cradling her child. 

Stiles doesn’t sob anymore when he comes out here, but crying he does. Gentle. Sometimes for happiness and fond memories, and sometimes just with that little bit of hurt. Of loss.

-

Stiles was shaking. Inside and out. His organs jostled together in some sort of competition for his acknowledgement. His lungs expanded and contracted rapidly, only ever filling halfway before decompressing. His ribcage – bony and jagged – pressed outwards against his skin and inwards to pierce his lungs. Heart beating unevenly and pulse throbbing through all his veins; up along his arms to his hands and down through his legs which shook as he ran through the preserve.

His hands were the worst of all. So visibly shaking that Stiles couldn’t stand to look at them. Too much like his mother’s only one week ago as she had reached out to touch his cheek for the last time. “I love you, my son, my Stiles,” she had said. Stiles had nodded. God, what an idiot. “I love you too”. How difficult was it to say four little words? But he’d lost his chance.

Stiles’ legs were shaking badly and he had to struggle through the last few steps that take him to the lake’s edge. When he got there he just let himself collapse. His trousers immediately became soaked in thick brown mud, his knees sunk into it and brushed the edge of the water line. He held his hands up in front of him.

“Stop,” he pleaded, “stop shaking. Stop. Stop _please._ Stop.” It was guttural and came out through a throat swollen from crying. His breath was still rattling in desperately and much too quickly and he forcefully pressed his hands into the lake water in front of him, pressed them as far into the seabed as his quivering arms allowed.

It got easier then, with his hands out of sight.

Stiles stayed there, surrounded by the night and nocturnal creatures, whose sounds were almost enough for him to block out his breathing if he focused on them. And he did. For hours he sat and listened and let the blackness of the water and the sky cloak him, and let himself be not-Stiles. He’s there until the shivering of his body is due to the cold and wet and not his feelings.

When the night birds stopped singing, ready to pass the music along to the day birds, Stiles moved. His legs are arms and neck were stiff, all made worse by the drying mud on his clothes. The path back to his house seemed shorter before, made outside of temporality by the night and Stiles’ desperation. In the morning it was a long walk and he spent most of the hour focussing furiously on an _else._ He planned an essay not due for another 3 weeks, made a grocery list in his head, alphabetised his books from memory.

He didn’t have a key with him and when his father opened the door after he rang the bell all he did was sigh and usher Stiles upstairs and into a hot shower.

-

The next year he took his dad to the lake.

Earlier in the day they had gone to the cemetery to visit Claudia’s gravestone. Stiles only goes to keep his dad company. The idea of bones rotting in the ground had always disturbed him. Besides, going there doesn’t remind him of his mother. But the lake, with all the time they spent together when he was younger, the lake does.

They go after visiting her tombstone. Stiles made him park off the main street and walked them both through the preserve like they used to when he was younger and they went for picnics. When they neared the edge of the preserve the sound of people splashing in the water cut through the tress. Stiles frowned, feeling a swell of irrational anger come over him. How dare there be others who are being happy in this place today. 

“It’s the Watsons.” His dad had walked to the edge of the tree line to look. Stiles joined him. He watched Harry Watson bomb into the water from the dock built out into the lake. The wave from his jump crested up over his wife and young kids who all retaliated immediately.

“Do you want to go down still?” His father placed a hand gently on his shoulder. Stiles shook his head and moved away from his dad’s hand; walked back to the car. He heard his dad follow him.

Stiles hands shook and he shoved them deep into the pocket of his hoodie and pressed the clenched fists hard against his stomach.

He was hurting and angry that someone else was in the lake. His and his mother’s lake. But of course, it was never really theirs, and some of his anger became directed towards himself for ever thinking he could keep the lake and that place as something special for himself and her memory.

Back in his room, lying on his bed and glaring at the ceiling, Stiles finally recognised the jealously he felt beneath his anger. It’s unfair that others got to have the lake without the memory of his mother and the thought of her death. He realised sadly that he’d been clinging onto a naive belief that he had some sort of ownership of the lake. That he deserved its solidarity as a way to remember his mother. He’d been thinking of it as her grave, that place that was just for her. A marker that only those close to her would visit. Should be allowed to visit.

But it wasn’t.

-

The next year he goes with his dad to the graveyard after breakfast. He doesn’t stay for long, letting his father be alone with her to talk or do whatever it is he does. They have a quite dinner when they finally return home and both retire to bed early.

Just before midnight, Stiles slips out of his room via the window and goes to the lake.

After that he does it every year.

He always brings a key and always returns before he expects his father to be up, but there’s always a fresh towel waiting for him in the bathroom, warmed by his mother’s old hot water bottle.


End file.
